Airport Read Free

taxi clearance, another dozen waiting to start engines.”
    It was a demonstration, Mel reflected, of how urgently the airport needed additional runways and taxiways. For three years he had been urging construction of a new runway to parallel three zero, as well as other operational improvements. But the Board of Airport Commissioners, under political pressure from downtown, refused to approve. The pressure was because city councilmen, for reasons of their own, wanted to avoid a new bond issue which would be needed for financing.
    “The other thing,” the tower watch chief said, “is that with three zero out of use, we’re having to route takeoffs over Meadowood. The complaints have started coming in already.”
    Mel groaned. The community of Meadowood, which adjoined the southwest limits of the airfield, was a constant thorn to himself and an impediment to flight operations. Though the airport had been established long before the community, Meadowood’s residents complained incessantly and bitterly about noise from aircraft overhead. Press publicity followed. It attracted even more complaints, with increasingly bitter denunciations of the airport and its management. Eventually, after long negotiations involving politics, more publicity and–in Mel Bakerfeld’s opinion–gross misrepresentation, the airport and the Federal Aviation Administration had conceded that jet takeoffs and landings directly over Meadowood would be made only when essential in special circumstances. Since the airport was already limited in its available runways, the loss in efficiency was considerable.
    Moreover, it was also agreed that aircraft taking off toward Meadowood would–almost at once after becoming airborne–follow noise abatement procedures. This, in turn, produced protests from pilots, who considered the procedures dangerous. The airlines, however–conscious of the public furor and their corporate images–had ordered the pilots to conform.
    Yet even this failed to satisfy the Meadowood residents. Their militant leaders were still protesting, organizing, and–according to latest rumors–planning legal harassment of the airport.
    Mel asked the tower watch chief, “How many calls bave there been?” Even before the answer, he decided glumly that still more hours of his working days were going to be consumed by delegations, argument, and the same insoluble discussions as before.
    “I’d say fifty at least, we’ve answered; and there’ve been others we haven’t. The phones start ringing right after every takeoff–our unlisted lines, too. I’d give a lot to know how they get the numbers.”
    “I suppose you’ve told the people who’ve called that we’ve a special situation–the storm, a runway out of use.”
    “We explain. But nobody’s interested. They just want the airplanes to stop coming over. Some of ‘em say that problems or not, pilots are still supposed to use noise abatement procedures, but tonight they aren’t doing it.”
    “Good God!–if I were a pilot neither would I.” How could anyone of reasonable intelligence, Mel wondered, expect a pilot, in tonight’s violent weather, to chop back his power immediately after takeoff, and then go into a steeply banked turn on instruments–which was what noise abatement procedures called for.
    “I wouldn’t either,” the tower chief said. “Though I guess it depends on your point of view. If I lived in Meadowood, maybe I’d feel the way they do.”
    “You wouldn’t live in Meadowood. You’d have listened to the warnings we gave people, years ago, not to build houses there.”
    “I guess so. By the way, one of my people told me there’s another community meeting over there tonight.”
    “In this weather?”
    “Seems they still plan to hold it, and the way we heard, they’re cooking up something new.”
    “Whatever it is,” Mel predicted, “we’ll hear about it soon.”
    Just the same, he reflected, if there was a public meeting at Meadowood, it